


I, Adric

by Nope



Category: Doctor Who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-22
Updated: 2006-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:33:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: He's smart enough to save himself.





	I, Adric

"Now I'll never know if I was right."

Adric clutched the rope belt that had once belonged to his brother, watching the Earth grow larger in the view-screen. Larger. Larger. Lar-- Oh. It'd stopped.

Well, that was a bit odd.

"You were right," said a familiar voice. "Or, at least, I was."

Adric swung around to see... Adric?!

"Yes, it's you," said Adric. "Or rather me. Well, I am you. It's a bit difficult to explain really."

"You're me from a parallel timeline," Adric said.

"...oh. Well then it isn't that difficult to explain," Adric said.

"But why are you here? And why aren't we plummeting to my doom?"

"Pausing time was the first trick we learnt," said another Adric, absently kicking the dead cyberman. "You know, they were Daleks in my timeline." He patted the Dalek weapon hanging from his own rope belt.

"You see, Adric," said Adric, who was fiddling with his star for Excellence, "just before I died, I ran through the space-time equations I'd learned while onboard the TARDIS, and I realised that they were telling me the time itself was an entirely subjective concept."

"And, of course," said Adric, "time and space are all one, really, so, in a sense, all time and space is just thought, which was rather a good thought to have before the Daleks killed me, I thought."

"Of course!" said Adric, waving his belt. "It's so obvious! But if space and time and thought are all the same, then so is mass and energy -- why, the very foundations of physics itself can be reduced to a simple set of mathematical axioms!"

"I told you he'd get it," said Adric.

"I knew you would," Adric agreed.

"Well, we are rather bright," another Adric said.

"And the more of us there are," a fifth Adric said, "the better we become. Bouncing our thoughts off each other, running the maths together."

"Like computers in parallel, but better," the third Adric added. "Each one of us is just different enough to bring something new to the whole. We're a perfect evolving gestalt."

"And there are other benefits, too."

"Other benefits?" asked Adric, eying the others speculatively. "Am I thinking what you're thinking?"

"Exactly," said Adric, as space became time, became thought, became a splendid bedroom with velvet curtains and silk sheets and pillows and an impressively large bed. "It is the best solution; we're mathematically certain."

Adric believed Adric, but was quite happy when the proof was demonstrated anyway.


End file.
